The present invention relates to a connector, particularly to a connector including pairs of contacts for high-speed signal transmission and pairs of contacts for low-speed signal transmission.
As a data transmission scheme, a differential transmission scheme is known in which opposite-phase signals are output to a pair of signal lines and data is transmitted by a potential difference between the signal lines. The differential transmission scheme, which has advantages such as high speed and stability, strong noise resistance, and low power consumption, is employed in various data transmission fields.
A connector suited to such a differential transmission scheme is disclosed in JP 5970329 B, for example. The connector, as shown in FIG. 23, includes a housing 1 made of an insulating material, a plurality of contacts 2 that are conductive and held by the housing 1, and a metal shell 3 that covers the outer peripheral portion of the housing 1.
FIG. 24 shows a configuration of the plurality of contacts 2. A ground contact G to be connected to the ground and a pair of signal contacts S for transmitting differential signals are alternately arranged. The ground contact G and the signal contact S each include a contact portion 4 disposed on one end side and to be in contact with a contact of a mating connector (not shown) and a mount portion 5 disposed on the other end side and to be mounted on a circuit substrate (not shown), and a fixation portion 6 disposed between the contact portion 4 and the mount portion 5 and to be embedded and fixed in the housing 1.
Each of the ground contact G has a bent portion 7 bent to protrude inward at the fixation portion 6. Due to the existence of the bent portion 7, the ground contact G is partially separated from an adjacent pair of signal contacts S, so that the alignment pitches of the plurality of contacts 2 are narrowed while maintaining desired transmission characteristics to achieve miniaturization of the connector.
However, for example, like so-called Universal Serial Bus (USB) Type-C connector, there is an issue in a connector including pairs of contacts for high-speed signal transmission complying with the USB 3.1 standard as well as pairs of contacts for low-speed signal transmission at relatively low-speed complying with the USB 2.0 standard that, even if the ground contact G including the bent portion 7 is disposed between these pairs of contacts as in JP 5970329 B, a noise generated at the pairs of contacts for low-speed signal transmission has an effect on the pairs of contacts for high-speed signal transmission, whereby crosstalk occurs to deteriorate the transmission characteristics.